Tale of Two Cities:'It's never peaceful here'

In the heart of Robinwood, Sherva Forrester runs what she considers a safe haven.

Every afternoon, a dozen or so teenage girls come to her home to act, well, like teenage girls. HOT 99.5 blares on the stereo below the television as the girls talk about boys and clothes and check their MySpace pages.

They leave the haven around 9 p.m., walking home down darkened streets dominated by the crack dealing, nighttime gunfire and hopelessness that defines life for Annapolis' 2,200-plus public housing residents.

"It's never peaceful here," said Ms. Forrester, a 31-year-old mother of four. "It's not a nice neighborhood."

For that, you walk a quarter-mile to Hunt Meadow. There, upper middle class families worry about ballet recitals and baseball, not bullets. Drugs are in medicine cabinets, not on street corners.

In the divided world of modern-day Annapolis, nowhere is the gap more glaring than in the 1,104 apartments and rowhomes owned by the Annapolis Housing Authority.

From the bug-ridden living room floors of Eastport Terrace to the barren lawns of College Creek Terrace, life in public housing is for many a day-to-day struggle to survive.

Adults complain of depression and the desperation of being left behind. Children watch fights and drug deals and can't even leave their bicycles chained to the porch; they'll still be stolen.

Like a virus, problems pass from one generation to the next as kids repeat their parents' mistakes and never leave their neighborhoods. Many have never strolled along City Dock or sailed the Chesapeake Bay, two rites of passage in well-to-do Annapolis.

"(Public housing) is supposed to be a foot stool, not a crutch," said Alice Johnson, 58, who has lived in public housing most of her life.

That crutch is not colorblind. While blacks represent about a third of the city's population, they make up 94 percent of its public housing residents.

It wasn't always this bad. Public housing started as a way to rescue the city's poorest from slumlords.

But somewhere along the line, neighborhood pride and tight-knit families gave way to crime and isolation. The housing authority's history of corruption and instability doesn't help, and the federal government has recently put the authority on its watch list.

The chairman of the authority Board of Commissioners isn't oblivious to public housing's decades-old problems. But Trudy McFall said progress is being made despite federal cutbacks and an acute need to replace crumbling homes.

Public housing is filled with those who want to do right. People like Leslie Brown-Bonilla, who supports her disabled husband and two sons while dreaming of being a nurse.

"I've had some ups and downs and I thought I was going to get out," said Ms. Brown-Bonilla, 47. "But I know I'm going to get out. I know I'm going to be a nurse. I just need to get into my first semester of school."

Another Maryland city's housing authority might offer a model for Annapolis. And Ms. McFall is looking beyond Washington for the dollars and expertise to make things better.

Hidden blight

Run down, trashed, dilapidated. Take your pick when describing the city's 10 public housing communities.

Behind the tree-lined streets of the Historic District is Clay Street, where some residents of Obery Court and College Creek Terrace don't even have weeds, let alone grass.

Just off Forest Drive are Newtowne 20 and Robinwood, small cul-de-sacs where broken glass litters the playgrounds and graffiti stains the community centers. Throughout public housing, able-bodied men stand on the sidewalks, glaring at outsiders who enter.

Even the Glenwood high-rise, accommodating mostly elderly and disabled, has a huge sinkhole in its parking lot.

The one community still in good shape is Bloomsbury Square, which was rebuilt a few years ago. But some residents complain of problems inside Bloomsbury, too.

You'll have to go looking for the blight. Visitors entering the city through its main arteries don't see public housing, most of which used to be on the city's outskirts. A real estate boom changed that, with many new homes cropping up around Robinwood, Newtowne and Clay Street.

The city's first public housing project, College Creek Terrace, is one of the oldest in America. It opened in 1940, three years after the housing authority was formed.

The second-oldest community was Bloomsbury Square, built in the 1940s for Navy personnel. It was torn down in 2003 and replaced with modern public housing to make room for a state office building expansion.

A public housing boom took place in the 1950s and 1960s.

Obery Court and Eastport Terrace - the former housing blacks, the latter whites - were built in 1952 and 1953, respectively. Both communities more than doubled the city's stock of public housing.

Annapolis Gardens opened in 1961. Harbour House started as private Eastport apartments that were sold to the authority in the 1960s.

The third wave came in the 1970s. Newtowne and Robinwood arrived in 1970 and 1971, followed by the Glenwood high-rise in 1976.

The driving force behind the city's public housing was a proliferation of slums.

In the early 20th century, poor whites and blacks lived in rickety tenements with no indoor plumbing and a bare minimum of rooms. Dirt floors, space heaters and overcrowding were common.

Robinwood and Newtowne also became landing spots for families displaced by the city's urban renewal efforts in the 1970s. Intended to rid Annapolis of blight, urban renewal today is blamed for destroying Clay Street's commercial core and disrupting its sense of community.

As an infant, former alderwoman and current authority board member Cynthia A. Carter was one of the first residents of College Creek Terrace. She spent about a dozen years there.

She remembers her old neighborhood as "far, far different" from what it is now. Back in the day, residents painted around College Creek Terrace and kept up their yards. Grass grew. Vegetable gardens were common.

"We had pride in what we had," Mrs. Carter said.

She remembers Maggie, an elderly woman who kept watch on an entire block of kids when the parents went out. Her father had his own distinct whistle she could hear from the top of the street. Other dads had their own whistles.

"There was always somebody looking out for somebody," Mrs. Carter said.

Back then, raising kids was everybody's responsibility. If you did wrong, you could expect a spanking from a neighbor and another one when you got home.

Somewhere along the line, the right to discipline was lost. If you corrected a boy, his mom got in your face.

Over the years, Mrs. Carter said the family structure broke down. Now instead of close-knit communities, generations of children without positive role models skip school, use drugs and have no sense of self-worth.

Mrs. Carter blames the breakdown on the dismantling of black communities.

As their land became more valuable, blacks were uprooted from downtown and lower Eastport. Public housing "became a place after a while to put the poor who otherwise could not afford anything else," Mrs. Carter said. "It breaks it up. Grandma's over there, her son's over there. We're divided ... We don't have that human touch."

Years of neglect

Public housing has not aged gracefully. Ms. Forrester, for instance, has had problems ranging from squirrels in the attic to electrical fires. Shortly after Ms. Brown-Bonilla's family moved into the new Bloomsbury Square, which was built in 2003, the bannister in the stairway broke off the wall, making it difficult for her husband to get up and down the stairs.

As the housing authority's executive director from 1974 to 1988, it was Arthur G. Strissel Jr.'s job to maintain public housing. Instead, he robbed it.

During his tenure, Mr. Strissel took more than $90,000 in cash from contractors seeking to do work on authority dwellings.

Other bribes came in the form of work done on Mr. Strissel's ornate Eastport home, including a slate roof and copper gutters. The home was less than a dozen blocks from Eastport Terrace and Harbour House.

Mr. Strissel was convicted in 1988 on 10 counts of wire fraud, bribery and racketeering and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He served three years.

While Mr. Strissel was on the take, the properties he was responsible for fell into ruin. More than $91,000 was spent on landscaping in the late 1980s that was never done.

In 1985, authority officials spent $65,000 in travel, including $3,000 for Mr. Strissel to stay four nights in a New Orleans hotel suite. At the same time, the authority slashed funding for air-conditioning and refused to pay for tenants' spoiled food when the power was out for days.

Harold S. Greene took over for Mr. Strissel. He was forced out in 1996 amid conflicts with the board and replaced by P. Holden Croslan, who came from a Connecticut housing authority.

Ms. Croslan moved quickly to save the authority, which was in a deep financial hole. She fired excess staff and slashed other costs to pull the agency out of red ink.

While her business-like approach won supporters, Ms. Croslan's critics said she treated tenants poorly. She resigned in 2003 after clashing with Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer over the state of public housing.

Deputy director Clyde Caldwell took over on an interim basis with an eye toward becoming the permanent director. But a power struggle with the board led to his dismissal in 2004.

A national search led to the appointment of Harry Sewell, a veteran of state government and the affordable housing industry. He abruptly resigned in 2005 to take a job with a developer.

The current director, Eric Brown, took over in September 2005. He now has to contend with a harsh review from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the authority.

HUD named the Annapolis housing agency as "troubled," which means it will face even more federal scrutiny.

While the authority could face a federal takeover, HUD spokesman Maria Bynum said that's an option of last resort. She said HUD prefers to keep public housing in local hands.

Ms. McFall, the authority board chairman, said federal budget cuts have taken their toll. To keep rents low, the authority depends on an operating subsidy from HUD. In recent years, the subsidy has been funded at 80 percent of what the authority needs.

The authority also has limited funds to repair its units. Right now, the authority will have $430,000 this fiscal year to fix 1,104 units, many of which date back to the 1960s.

"Just at a time when our housing is so aged ... That's a pretty grim picture," said Ms. McFall, who will step aside when her five-year term on the board ends in July.

'We get burnt out'

Like many of her neighbors, Janay Allen of Robinwood doesn't want to fall prey to public housing's woes.

"Staying in the house is our only option to get away from the drugs," the 15-year-old said.

Janay and her friends, many of whom attend the Knowledge is Power Program Harbor Academy in Edgewater, say if it weren't for school, they wouldn't get to see much outside of Robinwood. Since they've been at the school, they've been to Atlanta, Orlando and Baltimore. They even go to Saturday school to escape the "drugs, violence, run down houses and gossip."

Ms. Brown-Bonilla of Bloomsbury Square wants a better life for her children.

"How do you raise wholesome kids anymore?" Ms. Brown-Bonilla asked. "Half of my son's friends were HIV positive from birth. How do I tell him?"

As some public housing residents move in and out of the system, there are those families who have been there for generations.

Take one College Creek Terrace family who asked to not be named. A mother of two, she was raised in College Creek Terrace by her mother, who also still lives there. Her sister just recently moved to Eastport Terrace for a place of her own.

It's in Eastport Terrace that the two women watch three children in the early morning.

One day, two young children on the couch watch "Blue's Clues," a stack of laundry sits in the corner and a mother is feeding her newborn baby.

But then, a few bugs scamper across the floor and the children begin to get restless. Outside, people lean out the windows or gather on front porches to chat with neighbors, catch up on the latest gossip and news.

But just past the safety of front porches, residents say crime, peer pressure and lack of opportunity are getting the best of their kids' future.

"My son is getting sucked into that life," the woman said. "It's getting out of control and I don't know what to do about it. People say move, move, move. But if I could move, I would have done so.

"It's hard, especially when you are the type of mother who is trying to show them the right way and there are more people out there doing things wrong. I feel like I'm being defeated."

"We get burnt out," said Ms. Johnson of Bloomsbury Square. "But it's a vicious cycle. It begins at birth and goes from generation to generation."

Doing it right

When it comes to public housing, Hagerstown isn't what comes to mind. But the city less than 100 miles away from Annapolis is a national model for what works.

A city of more than 38,000 with demographics similar to Annapolis, 19 percent of Hagerstown residents either live in public housing or have federal rent vouchers, said Ted Shankle, the Hagerstown Housing Authority's executive director.

Like Annapolis, Hagerstown is responsible for 10 public housing communities, some of which cater to elderly and disabled.

What Hagerstown doesn't have is Annapolis' problems.

Noland Village, considered the worst public housing in Hagerstown, would be a model community here. The streets are devoid of drug dealing and the yards are neat. It's the same story at other communities.

"Curb appeal is important," Mr. Shankle said. "If we don't force people to keep things clean, we know what will happen."

Hagerstown employs an inspector to patrol yards and home interiors. Those who don't keep their homes clean face eviction.

Mr. Shankle and his staff are strict but proactive with residents. "If they're not responsible, we have thousands of people who want to replace them," he said.

Hagerstown public housing tenants are required to work or perform community service. Annapolis employs a similar system, but until this week did not enforce it.

Thelma Burns, 45,, a lifelong resident of Hagerstown public housing, had no complaints.

"They work with you and are pretty nice, pretty fair. But don't you bring Annapolis up here," Ms. Burns warned a reporter. "I've been down in D.C. and Annapolis and we don't need that here. This is a nice area."

Open-air drug markets had also been an issue in Hagerstown. But Hagerstown's housing authority and its local police worked together in 2003 to install a 24-hour camera system in the heaviest crime areas.

Fourteen cameras were installed along Jonathan Street, where a number of public housing complexes are located. Tied to the police dispatch system, the cameras record 28 days of footage and can zoom in on specific areas.

"They never know when (the officer) is on the street or in the camera room watching the whole community," said Hagerstown Police Chief Arthur Smith.

"As word spread about the eye in the sky, drugs eventually moved out of the neighborhood. It is no longer where most of the violence occurs."

The chief said drug dealing in public housing isn't dead. "But it has spread out and (dealers) have had to shift their tactics a lot. Folks that live up there no longer have the same amount of drug deals right outside their houses."

Chief Smith said getting the money to pay for cameras was hard, but the investment has paid off.

"If (Annapolis is) looking for additional things to try, I would look at the camera system. It basically allows our narcotics units to better patrol the city," Chief Smith said.

"The camera system has been effective here and if they wanted to come down here, we would be glad to show Annapolis police how it has worked."

The future

Ms. McFall said the future of Annapolis' public housing isn't as bleak as some make it out to be, despite the substandard rating from HUD.

She referred to plans unveiled earlier this year to demolish Obery Court and replace it with 60 senior apartments, 51 additional homes and 85 additional parking spaces.

College Creek Terrace, which has historic value, will be renovated. Authority officials say no tenants will be left homeless by the project.

Ms. McFall sees public-private partnerships as the key to reviving public housing.

Under her model, private companies would spend money to renovate public housing and private managers would run the properties. The housing authority would have an oversight role with the private firms receiving development and management fees.

The authority has several development firms drawing up concepts to remodel public housing. Ms. McFall said it will take at least 10 years before all the city's public housing is overhauled.

Bringing in the private sector is the only way Annapolis' worn-down public housing communities are going to be fixed, said Ms. McFall, who heads an affordable housing development firm in Eastport. "Private development doesn't equal evil," she said.

Ms. McFall believes public housing can be made to look and feel like every other community in the city.

"My goal would be in 15 years, we wouldn't even know what was public housing," she said.

Another option kicked around over the years is home ownership, which is seen as a way of fostering community pride.

Former Annapolis mayor Dennis Callahan believes worthy families in public housing should be allowed to own their homes "even if you have to give them the house. The house becomes an asset that can be passed on."

The city can't afford to take over public housing, he said. "The fact is, we're stuck with it and we have to do the best we can."

Many residents say children need more role models and some type of Big Brother, Big Sister-style program.

Raynaldo Brown, a former public housing resident, has started one for the children in Bowman Court and Annapolis Gardens, enlisting the help of friends and Alderwoman Classie G. Hoyle, D-Ward 3.

Targeting kids ages 7 to 13, Mr. Brown and his team of 10 volunteers spend time with about a dozen children and are hoping to mentor more as the program grows, possibly expanding to other areas of the city.

"They need learn how to talk and to act when they are out," Mr. Brown said. "I want to let them know they don't have to sell drugs to be successful. It ain't always about selling drugs."

Mrs. Hoyle has taken one young girl under her wing. So far, she and 9-year-old Shawnay Allen have gone to dinner and a fashion show.

"Some of (the children) don't get the opportunity to go places and do things. All they know is this community and school, and that's it," Mrs. Hoyle said. "If she sees me volunteering, it will let her know there are other opportunities for her."

The public housing resident who asked for anonymity said it is going to take the whole neighborhood to get children through the rough times. But that is a challenge in itself.

"You show them right at home and then just go outside and everything is wrong," she said. "Children are bored, there's nothing for them to do. There are good people, but it's a losing battle. It's a no-win situation."

Ms. Johnson of Bloomsbury Square agreed, saying more family involvement and social programs are needed.

"Poor people have been conditioned to live like this for all of time," she said. "We're not asking for anything more than you'd want - a chance."